"I was 37 years old and watching everybody experience life—I felt like I was literally just sitting in the sidelines of my own. Emotionally. Physically. I felt stuck and unhappy. I now see that resolve to live something different as a stubbornness in me that was like, 'We're done with this. You're going to do something else.' And I had no idea what that was going to be and I had no idea what it would look like. But I remember that I was ready for something to be different. I can look back at that now and I can see that that was the first time that I ever felt massive self-love.

"If you had asked me if that was self-love at the time, then I wouldn’t have said it was. But I've learned that it’s not always something that you can identify—a light bulb when it happens or it's sparkly and shiny and beautiful. Some of those biggest moments of growth, especially in the last year have been moments where I'm feeling something really painful—like, I’m putting a sports bra on and I start crying for no reason. And all of a sudden I realize, 'Oh my god, you’re feeling. You're not tapping out. You're not looking for a coping mechanism. You're not doing anything but existing right now. Hell yes, girl—you’re here! So cry all you want. Feel that shit.'"

"I think that when you talk to a plus size person, especially one who has been addressing her health and her wellness, you subconsciously want to hear about this 'before and after' in her life. You want to hear about how things were so terrible for her. And then when she lost weight, they all got better. Right? But that's diet culture. The sooner we stop playing into that story, the sooner we start breaking and dismantling the system that keeps us all in that place.

"You know, I don't have a particularly traumatizing moment as a plus size woman in the workforce. I am certain that I probably experienced some level of bias, but I never really noticed, whether that was because it wasn't overt or whether it was because it was just who I was. I lived a very defensive life to the point that my defensiveness was aggressive and it was assertive. And so I always felt a deep sense of responsibility to try harder."

"I think there was a really great deal of my life that I wasn't going to let anybody tell me that I was any different than anybody else. And so I campaigned for myself. I tried harder, I fought louder. I had the best ideas. I worked the fastest, the hardest. I spent money buying accessories that I couldn't afford because I wanted to blend in and I couldn't get the clothes I wanted. I spent a lot of time trying to prove to people that I belonged in the room just like everybody else. And I think in doing that, I actually lost who I was.

"A couple of years ago I was in a relationship with someone and he turned to me and he said, 'Sapora, stop campaigning. I already know you're awesome. You don't have to keep telling me you're awesome. You just have to be awesome.' And I didn't get that. I didn’t get that the most powerful thing I can do is not to fight and prove my need to be seen, but just to own who I am without extra fanfare."

"Whenever I teach or mentor people, sometimes I hold a tape measure and I say, 'Everybody wants to get from zero to a foot, but nobody wants to go inch by inch.' Then I say, 'Everybody wants to go from zero to one inch, but you have to go through all the little millimeters first.' So [growth] is not going from zero to 12—it’s the willingness to go to 0.01 to 0.02 to 0.03. It’s all these tiny unglamorous choices that get us there.

"It can be as small as: When I wake up in the morning, do I pick up my phone and do I go on social media right away or do I close my eyes and breathe for one minute? Do I give myself the gift of my own presence before I allow anything else to come into my space?"

"The first time I ever ran an event, I stood in front of 75 women who had showed up to be in a space that I created. [I remember thinking], 'This is so fucking weird—like, what is this?!' [laughs] And I remember asking everybody to close their eyes and breathe in and out together. And that's all that it was—just a moment of complete presence. And I was like, wow okay, something just happened. Maybe you’re doing something right here.

"When you're a solopreneur and you work for yourself day in and day out, you never get those moments. You are attached to the inner workings of your business, especially if you're at a point where you can't hire 10 people to help you—you literally do everything yourself. And that's where I am. So it's helpful for me to take a step back and think about the people who slide into my DMs, the people who show up at my workshops, or the people who just write me and say, 'This is what your writing did for me.' The biggest joy I ever get is if I'm able to connect with people in real life. That’s the greatest feeling ever."